this ODT has so many potential to become the best affordable treadmill: you can crouch and do freedom to do a whole lot movement, you walk on a flat surface, not on a slope! I totally felt in love with this design. However, I don't know what is the material of the surface? did the sock sliding really work? Any way, this already looks great Hope they will release a commercial product soon!

adventurer wrote:this ODT has so many potential to become the best affordable treadmill: you can crouch and do freedom to do a whole lot movement, you walk on a flat surface, not on a slope! I totally felt in love with this design. However, I don't know what is the material of the surface? did the sock sliding really work? Any way, this already looks great Hope they will release a commercial product soon!

i think the surface is made of ordinary steel. It takes not that much effort to walk like that if you have the right support. if you have tiled floor or parquet try to grab a doorframe and you can walk like
that on socks.
It works great and looks cheap but i could imagine that it would take to much physical effort to move. But this sth tweakable.
EDIT: there is some plastic film on the surface.

Have to say that this is my favorite design so far. It looks like a bit of effort to walk, but should be ok. Looks like they're using a flexible nylon stretched over the square metal frame. You can actually see it flexing as he walks on it.
I'm wondering if nylon casters on the bottom of some shoes combined with just a square of carpet could work as well (or better).
One thing though, I'd want to put some signifficant rubber capping on thost poles. Wouldn't want to whack your head on one when you fall over wearing the rift! A better solution (but more costly) then the poles would be something like:

ODT design.jpg

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Seems less likely to generate injury than the omni, but I have found that harnesses are immersion breaking. They chaff and are quite noisy (if not in sound then in vibration) Though you have a gait of sorts, your feet sliding doesn't feel natural, it sends signals to your brain that you are in danger of falling.

I don't want to sound negative but I am surprised people aren't trying a more simple approach.

blazespinnaker wrote:Seems less likely to generate injury than the omni, but I have found that harnesses are immersion breaking. They chaff and are quite noisy (if not in sound then in vibration) Though you have a gait of sorts, your feet sliding doesn't feel natural, it sends signals to your brain that you are in danger of falling.

I don't want to sound negative but I am surprised people aren't trying a more simple approach.

If you're referring to the idea of a floating hamsterball, then that isn't without its own issues. Such as getting the cables inside it and, to a lesser extent, getting the control signals.
If latency wasn't an issue, then you could use wireless, I guess.
I'm also worried about how long it would take for the carbon dioxide level inside a 10foot diameter ball to get to a dangerous level. I can imagine people passing out after playing for a couple of hours and possibly worse if not found.

Having been inside those balls, I can tell you - they're pretty bad, even if they have holes in them.

Until we get a real high friction ODT which has no latency and can virtually duplicate different inclines, then I think simple solutions that don't require any sort of sliding around or rig you have to buy (except for the Oculus Rift and a motion-cap system) will do just fine.

Interesting harness design. It looks like it offers almost no resistance during turning and the crouch/jump is a very nice feature. The step motion appears a bit strenuous. It seems like he really has to lean and push to get those feet moving, but maybe it's something that could be improved upon with the right materials - similar to what has been done with the Wiz and Omni. I'm certainly intrigued.

I like this one a lot. The walking motion doesn't look too bad (could be improved with less friction as brantlew says) and hes put a bit of thought into the harness arrangement, which is more sophisticated than the Omni's. As blazespinnaker pointed out though, the noise and feel isn't so good for immersion (although, i'd still venture to say its better than having no crouch/jump) and as Android pointed out, those posts are an injury waiting to happen. He shouldn't be using it with those uncapped like that!

This looks great, the sliding action on the support bars is exactly what I was looking for, it looks very natural, small, but I do think the base material needs some work, or alternative material for the bottom of the feet.

On a side note: its really great to see the Tuscany demo starting to become the "Hello World" of VR - which was sort of its intention in the first place. We can all thank Andrew Reisse for creating this little demo from which so many projects are being based on.

This looks great, the sliding action on the support bars is exactly what I was looking for, it looks very natural, small, but I do think the base material needs some work, or alternative material for the bottom of the feet.

The up and down is complete progress...I dont like the idea like you are pushing a mail cart around all the time...running across the desert or through the jungle in an entire map is going to be stressful enough without having to push something along the way.

I feel like maybe walking on ball bearings that could spin in any direction or those roller skate shoes....somethign to make the movement easier..

with ball bearings your could use magnetic force to create tension for hills and what not as well as to keep them somewhat in place

Wow, you know what. You could make out of this design a very foldable one.
Fold the 4 poles inwards and make the support ring strucutre also more foldable and you could store it easily under your bed.
Now, if the effort it takes to walk isn't too big, it could be the best cheap material solution for
a very good ODT.
Looking forward to see what happens with this device.

Good find. This looks like it might work well with the WizDish, which would take care of walking without injuring yourself. The issue I've had with frames is that they are only one option, it's a project in it's own right, and someone may already have done it. I agree with what blazespinnaker says about harnesses but this is being used in a very similar way to what climbing harnesses were designed for. It isn't trying to support his weight as he runs about.

The second video is a lot more informative. The slow creeping motion seems to demonstrate that it doesn't take too much effort to slide the feet which was a concern that I had. All in all it seems like an impressive design and just needs a little refinement. Embed a couple of sensors in the harness ring and it looks like it could be a great solution.

It's an interesting innovation with the telescoping harness, but the constant leaning over like that could lead to pretty bad back posture and back injury.

One of the things I do like with these solutions though, is that they look they require real effort. I'm having trouble getting my heart rate up enough (too much exercise lately!) with walking/jogging in place.

I'm working on some algorithms that make it require more rapid walk movements in the IMU to trigger a keypress. Hopefully that works.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that I've been doing a lot of stretching exercise before any VR workout now. My achilles tendons are lovin' me for it.

brantlew wrote:The second video is a lot more informative. The slow creeping motion seems to demonstrate that it doesn't take too much effort to slide the feet which was a concern that I had. All in all it seems like an impressive design and just needs a little refinement. Embed a couple of sensors in the harness ring and it looks like it could be a great solution.

Yeah, the second video definitely allayed some concerns that came up when in the first video it looked like he had to push fairly hard to get going.

The creator stated he would look into a possible seating solution as well.

Another concern I have about this ODT is jumping, especially if you reduce the friction on the base plate. Because there isn't much vertical support, I wonder what would happen if his feet slid out beneath him.

With my walk in place ODT, even as confident as I've got, jumping is still a bit nerve wracking with no vertical support. I tend to just keep it to small, cautious hops.

blazespinnaker wrote:Another concern I have about this ODT is jumping, especially if you reduce the friction on the base plate. Because there isn't much vertical support, I wonder what would happen if his feet slid out beneath him.

With my walk in place ODT, even as confident as I've got, jumping is still a bit nerve wracking with no vertical support. I tend to just keep it to small, cautious hops.

Could you please post a picture of your walk in place ODT? I keep trying to visualize it but I'm not really sure what it is you're talking about

Maybe add a ceiling mounted safety rope. Would have to be pretty short though. Hitting one of the poles with your face/eyes/teeth/throat.... nogood at all...

easiest way to avoid this, would be simply to enlarge the poles via four telescope poles (so that the foldability remains). This way you don't have a chance anymore to hit them with your eyes.
And if you fall over knee protectors should be enough.
Problem solved!

blazespinnaker wrote:Another concern I have about this ODT is jumping, especially if you reduce the friction on the base plate. Because there isn't much vertical support, I wonder what would happen if his feet slid out beneath him.

With my walk in place ODT, even as confident as I've got, jumping is still a bit nerve wracking with no vertical support. I tend to just keep it to small, cautious hops.

Could you please post a picture of your walk in place ODT? I keep trying to visualize it but I'm not really sure what it is you're talking about

after multiple watchings of videos of virtux and this concept side bise-side,
there are few hard physics-facts that I think cannot really be overcome:

the further away you place your forward foot on a completely flat surface, the more effort it takes
to slide it back to the center, therefore the less natural/effortless the walk will be.
Virtux fights this by titling that surface upward and letting gravity of your body do large part
of that need work (of sliding that foot back). To me, in the videos of virtux results are clear:
the gamer extends his leg far further and slides them back much easier, exibiting
natural and relaxed long strides ('walk in the park' style), whereas in Cyberith one has to
resort to

* either very small leg extensions ('rabbit walk')
* or goes into full-on jogging mode to generate that extra force to fight the flatness of the surface

However, Cyberths vertical struts are where it wins hands down against the Virtuix,
ideally I would want to have Virtux' concave sliding surface combined with Cyberths
free-motion vertical struts, that could just be a killer combo (with addition of Rift + Hydra of cause!)

Maybe add a ceiling mounted safety rope. Would have to be pretty short though. Hitting one of the poles with your face/eyes/teeth/throat.... nogood at all...

easiest way to avoid this, would be simply to enlarge the poles via four telescope poles (so that the foldability remains). This way you don't have a chance anymore to hit them with your eyes.
And if you fall over knee protectors should be enough.
Problem solved!

Makes sense! At worst you'd bend out the poles, but at least you wouldn't impale yourself

Quote:
Depends on how you fall.
Well, i expect all humans using their hands to cushion the impact no matter how they fall.
Thats a very normal reflex and wouldn't let fall anyone directly onto his nose.

VRus wrote:the further away you place your forward foot on a completely flat surface, the more effort it takes
to slide it back to the center,

This isn't necessarily true. The force vector going down and generating friction will be less at an angle. As your feet gets closer to the center underneath your body, the more force required to slide it.

I'll agree though the dish approach does make it easier to walk. It's a bit awkward though, if you have ever tried it. It feels a bit weird having your feet slide like that. Not a very natural feeling. Hopefully what Jan has done with the plunge pin and the friction pads improves that feeling.

true for both devices. So I don't quite get how it doesn't necessarily require more force, to me
it quite obviously does - if only due to the fact that on a flat surface at the beginning of your stride (heel touch-down)
you lower your entire body, and at the end the slide (heel at the center) you end up lifting your entire body - that's work (force times vert.dist. traveled),
whereas on concave dish your hips and body remain more less stationary during the entire stride - that's where the 'energy savings'
come from, note how in Cyberith's demo one keeps his knees constantly bent - to allow for necessary larger force generation (I do the same
thing while ice-skating, you cannot skate fast with your legs relaxed and straight)

I can see both devices are trade-offs in different ways:

* Virtux - less force, but less natural stride-geometry ('hamster style')
* Cyberrith - more force, but more natural stride-geometry